


On the Road to York

by icarus_chained



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: Confrontations, Fae & Fairies, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Holding Hands, Joyful, M/M, Magic, Reunions, Uncertainty, gratitude, playful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4701533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A figure appears out of the rain and the mist ahead of Childermass and Vinculus on the York Road. Stephen Black would have words with them both, if perhaps not quite the ones they expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Road to York

**Author's Note:**

> I ... Apparently Stephen/Vinculus, and Stephen/Vinculus/Childermass, is a thing I ship. I did not entirely see this coming, and I apologise for it. Heh.

It had been some years since highwaymen on the road to York had been a common concern, and yet Childermass couldn't quite help but think of them when he saw the figure standing ahead of them on the road. Not even because the man _looked_ particularly like a highwayman, but simply because a calm, armed figure appearing out of the mist ahead of you tended to incline your thoughts in a certain direction. 

Not necessarily wrongly, either, he thought grimly. The last time he had seen this man, it was alone and frantic in a cell that Childermass had helped put him in. Such things did not incline people to be friendly, he'd found.

If Stephen Black did intend him harm, though, it probably wouldn't be with a pistol, or even the sword buckled casually to his side. Magic ebbed and flowed in the wind and the rain around him, magic with a distinct taste of Faerie, and even his silver-grey greatcoat showed the touch of it now, seeming as it did to have the mists of London caught in its folds. There was no crown on his brow, but something about his face, something on the edge of Childermass' vision, suggested that there _should_ be. 

It seemed the man had come up in the world since last they met. Or up in _some_ world, anyway.

Childermass slowed Brewer to an instinctive, cautious walk, while they were still a ways up the road from the man. He didn't stop, mind. There would be no point in fleeing this particular confrontation, if confrontation it was to be. A little caution never did anyone any harm, though, and since his horse so very readily agreed with him, he figured caution in this instance was an instinct they both shared.

The man seated behind him on said horse, however, not quite so much.

"Something wrong, magician?" Vinculus asked ingenuously, leaning out around him to see what the problem was and damn near falling off the horse in the process. Childermass hissed in annoyance, taking one hand off the reins to try and pull him back aboard. Vinculus let out a little happy cry before he could manage it, though, and promptly slithered down Brewer's flank to land in a puddle in the road. The horse did not appreciate this manoeuvre, and danced sideways in a half-hearted effort to kick the man in the head. 

Up ahead, Childermass sensed more than saw Stephen Black take a sudden step towards them. He pulled Brewer back under control with some speed, and started to move them forwards to get between the damned idiot beggar and the man who had, by his own admission, once helped to hang him.

"None of that, my friend," Vinculus purred, grinning happily as he clambered to his feet and set a quelling hand around Childermass' calf. An action Childermass, it must be said, did not at all appreciate, and briefly considered responding to in the same manner as his horse. The street magician ignored this, however, and patted him lightly on the leg. "Stand fast, eh? I think this one's for me. Or if it isn't, I'll thank you to let me say hello first either way."

Without a further word, he ambled off down the last few yards of road separating them from Stephen Black and all his faerie magic. "Well met, Nameless Slave!" he cried, opening his arms joyously as they came abreast. 

Childermass wasn't quite sure, but he thought he saw Stephen smile a little in answer, and not entirely happily. It was a complicated expression, whatever it was. It spoke of hidden things, and both piqued Childermass' interest and made him all the more wary again. He inched closer to the pair, as much Brewer could be said to inch anywhere.

"It is Nameless King, now," Stephen answered, shifting his stance to something more welcoming as he greeted Vinculus, that faint smile still caught about his lips. "Though yes, we are well met. It is ... good to see you, my friend."

Vinculus laughed, his hips rolling in a lazy swagger as he spread his arms. "Did I not tell you?" he said, seemingly to the world at large as much as Stephen. "Did I not tell you that you would be raised on high? I am not always right, but at the same time I'm not often wrong, your kingship. I knew that you would rise to better things."

"Indeed you did," Stephen agreed. He had moved closer, studying Vinculus almost hungrily. That strangeness in his expression shifted, came to the fore. Pain, Childermass thought. Pain and joy and grief, and something of a profound relief. An odd thing to see, given Childermass' understanding of their last meeting. Stephen reached out, caught one of Vinculus' hands in his own. Held it happily, when Vinculus did not draw away. "You told me more than that, as well. I am glad to see that it was not false either. I am ... very glad to see that you are as difficult to kill as you promised you were."

Childermass couldn't see Vinculus' expression at this, but he could see the change in his stance. He watched the brash and exaggerated exuberance fade, as the man became somehow smaller and skinnier, and yet more relieved. There seemed an earnestness about him suddenly, a much smaller and simpler sort of gladness. He stepped in very close, a ragged man almost near enough to embrace a king, and the king in his silver finery only welcomed him gladly in turn. 

"... A fine thing, to be remembered by kings," Vinculus commented softly. He tilted his head, looking at Stephen sidelong. "And by friends, too. A very fine thing, wouldn't you agree?"

Stephen nodded seriously. He brought Vinculus' hand up to his chest, pressed it there with one fierce hand. There was something in his face of the man Childermass had seen in that cell, something wild and desperate, and yet there was something else underneath it too. A steel, a strength, a well of hard-won peace. He smiled, somewhat painfully, and gripped Vinculus' hand.

"A fine thing indeed," he agreed quietly, with his friend's hand in his own and his realm's magic soft and quiescent around him. "I think it a better one, though, to be alive to be reunited them, rather than remembered only. A happier thing, at the least."

Vinculus looked away, seemingly having reached his present limit for such fierce, intimate contact. He shrugged lightly, some of his brash facade having returned once more. "I'll not argue with that," he said, and for all that it was light and careless Childermass thought him not untouched. "Are you here for me, then, Nameless King? I think my friend was more worried you were come for him."

Stephen looked up at Childermass then, a mild, curious glance, and Childermass very carefully did not flinch. More than that, he did not move, save to incline his head in acknowledgement now that he was noticed enough to warrant it. The man's magic had not stirred, even when reminded of his presence. That seemed a hopeful sign, though Childermass could not say what he had done to deserve one.

"... It was mostly for you, yes," Stephen said at last, looking back at Vinculus. His smile had taken a more humorous cast now, less the simple joy and sorrow of before. "I suppose I might thank him as well, though, since he is here."

"Thank me?" Childermass asked, mildly startled. He could not remember much from their last meeting to warrant gratitude, or indeed any of their meetings, and said so quite honestly. If what he had pieced together of the man's situation with Norrell, Lady Pole and Faerie was true, Stephen Black had fewer reasons to thank him than almost anyone in the world, and a brief sojourn in a cell would only have capped it off. "For what?"

Stephen paused for a moment, and then walked towards him. He kept hold of Vinculus' hand in the process, almost convulsively, and the street magician turned with casual acceptance to amble after him. Strangely, despite this, and despite the fact that Childermass was mounted and they standing, no-one watching could doubt that it was Stephen who commanded the situation. He reached Brewer's shoulder, standing beside the bridle to look up at Childermass, and it was something of an effort to meet his earnest, heavy gaze.

"For listening," the new king said at last, with a great deal of weary dignity in his eyes. "For hearing my warning, and attempting to act on it. There were few enough who granted even that much." He looked down, a bitter little twist to his mouth. "Fewer even than I had expected, in fact. It would seem you are among rare company, sir. I thank you for it."

Childermass blinked at him. He would, he thought wryly, have been easier with violence. He had some small experience of that. To be thanked this way, for comparatively the tiniest of graces in the midst of far greater ills, unmoored him worse than a squall of foreign magic.

"... You're welcome?" he tried, after possibly too long a moment. Vinculus cackled quietly at him for it, but Stephen at least did not seem to take it amiss. Indeed, when he looked back up, he seemed somewhat sympathetic for the confusion, and somewhat amused as well. Childermass coughed, and straightened himself in his saddle. "It was little enough, and mostly by instinct. The way things were at the end there, I was inclined to listen to anyone's warnings, and yours was very clearly in earnest. It was only sensible to pay attention."

Vinculus cracked up in earnest there. "Sensible, says he. Well there's your rare company right there." He shook his head, swinging his and Stephen's hands in the air between them absently. Childermass stared down at him, feeling vaguely that he should say something pointed here, but for the life of him unable to think of anything. 

And Stephen, glancing between them with an equally odd expression on his face, seemed to come to a decision.

"Will you come with me a ways?" he asked them, standing a small step away from Brewer to better gather his dignity around himself. "The both of you. I think I would like to offer you my hospitality for a small time, if you can spare it."

Childermass exchanged a small glance with Vinculus. Which was, as it turned out, a largely pointless gesture. The street magician merely grinned blithely at him, and raised his hand where it was still entangled with Stephen's. An answer in itself, then, if not a particularly helpful one.

He rubbed his cheek thoughtfully, looking back at Stephen. The butler-turned-faerie-king looked back at him calmly, standing there in a puddle with his coat of mists and his not-quite-visible crown. A strange vision, come to visit them on the road to York and perturb their world with unprompted gratitude. Hah. Well then, Childermass thought. Well indeed.

"... We'll not all fit on the horse," he said, by way of his own answer. "He's not the friendliest of brutes either, or I'd give you the reins myself." One didn't ask a king to tromp in the wet, after all. Even if said king had not so long ago been a butler.

Stephen's face split into a wide smile, while his magic leapt around him like a cat startled to its feet. A door opened nearby, somewhere among the small trees by the side of the road. Childermass sensed it, even if he could not see it just yet. 

"That won't be a problem," said the King of Lost Hope. "It's not so far. Or rather, it is only as far as I wish it to be." He sobered slightly, strangely rueful, and lowered his voice to confide a little. "It's still odd to me, you know. Magic. I confess it has its uses at times, though."

Childermass chuckled. "It does at that," he agreed, and braced his hands on his saddle pommel to swing himself down beside them. He landed with something of a splash, but Vinculus was too muddy already to notice it, and if a little mud annoyed Stephen he certainly did not show it. Childermass shook his head, and flipped his reins across his shoulder the better to lead Brewer behind him. "Lead on," he said, with a little bow. It wasn't meant sarcastically. He'd no cause, and therefore no intent, to offer this man insolence. Stephen looked at him in slight askance anyway. Suspecting, as so many did, that insolence might be his default state of being.

Not wrongly, perhaps. In this instance, though, somewhat unwarranted.

"Come, Nameless King," Vinculus interrupted gently. Not without a smirk, of course. He tugged a little on Stephen's hand, turning the man to face him, and his expression changed for the smallest moment. He sobered, became small and earnest once again, with a faint smile and a world of shared knowledge in his eyes. "Shall we take a stroll then, we three?"

Something passed through Stephen, something private between the two of them that Childermass did not understand, and he pulled Vinculus' hand once more to his chest, holding it very tightly once again.

"Yes," he said, with a weight in his voice that sounded like tears, but a strange joy also. "Yes we shall. And may this one end more happily, for all of us."

Vinculus chuckled, stepping close and taking back their hands to press a small kiss to Stephen's knuckles, before nodding towards Childermass over Stephen's shoulder. "That's what sourpuss is for," he said, beaming happily. "He's a right man to have at your side if you want things to end happily. I can attest to that."

Stephen followed his gaze, the oddest expression on his face. Not, Childermass noted, a sceptical or disdainful one. More considering, thoughtful. Childermass blinked at them both. He stood there in the mud and wet, with his horse leaning heavily against his shoulder, and took a moment to wonder how alarmed by this development he ought to be. Stephen may have been a man not so long ago, but he was a faerie king now, and faeries were noted to have certain tendencies when it came to humans. Tendencies that the old fool leering over his shoulder looked to have not a single problem with. That might be considered cause for alarm.

But no, he thought. He _had_ pieced together Stephen's story, between one thing and another, or at least enough of it to know that this king was not and in all likelihood would never be that kind of faerie. He would be as safe in this man's hands as he would be in anyone's, and considerably safer than in many.

Stephen had, after all, offered gratitude where Childermass had expected vengeance. That alone, and the visible care he had for the skinny vagabond behind him, would be enough to give the lie to any such fears. That being the case ...

"I don't make promises I don't know yet if I can keep," he said softly, with a wry little shrug. "If you're looking for a happy ending, though, I'd not be averse to trying."

Stephen blinked slowly at that, raising his chin to study Childermass thoughtfully. Childermass looked back with good grace and honest sincerity, and after a moment it seemed that he had passed muster. Stephen bit his lip, an odd little smile on his face, and held out his free hand towards Childermass in invitation. A string of vagabonds, holding hands in the road. A king, a magician, and a herald. Childermass blinked a little himself, and reached out to take that hand with a shake of his head and a touch of humour in his own mouth.

"And what a merry company we are," he muttered, laughing softly to himself, and followed them gamely off the road to York and into Faerie, with Brewer trailing along behind him.

At least the horse, he thought, had managed to look dignified about it.


End file.
